


We Called This Love

by mathelode (engmaresh)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, Drabble Series, F/M, Forgiveness, Mild references to PTSD and depression, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Redemption, Romance, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 13:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18224057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/pseuds/mathelode
Summary: Serving out their sentences, sometimes together, sometimes apart, Kuvira and Baatar find themselves falling together once more.





	We Called This Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fanfic_nonnie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfic_nonnie/gifts).



> _Once in a while, I know our hearts beat out of time. And once in a while, I know they'll fall back in line._  
>  –The Rural Alberta Advantage's "In The Summertime".

> “What are you doing here?” It strikes her how _not_ out of place he looks in prison. Something about the tightness in his eyes, the curled tension in his shoulders. This is what she’d done to him.
> 
> “Korra couldn’t make it. Avatar business.”
> 
> “Oh.” She picks up her box of belongings. Old, musty trappings of a once Great Uniter. And a ring box—
> 
> She looks at Baatar. He’s watching the entrance. Quickly she nudges the box out of sight.
> 
> “Thank you, for picking me up.”
> 
> “It doesn’t mean anything.”
> 
> “I know,” she says, voice low, “I don’t expect it to."

 

+

> Kuvira wants to warn the children away. The mine is no playground, and someone could get hurt. Something could go wrong very quickly.
> 
> But she notices too how they gravitate around him. The machinery seems to fascinate them far more than her bending does. Maybe this is the future, one where she’d rendered herself obsolete. Advancement through technology no longer seems to require the skills of people like her.
> 
> A girl tugs on his shirt, and he carefully lifts her up so that she can peer into the machine’s inner workings. She says something, and he smiles.
> 
> Kuvira looks away.

 

+

 

When Baatar sees her poring over the yellowed sheets of paper, he has to fight back a frisson of panic. They’re meant to be secret.

“I didn’t know you were allowed to keep these.”

“They don’t know I have them,” he admits. “I redrew them. Tried to figure out where I went wrong.”

“Nothing went wrong,” she says sadly. “It was me.”

“Us.” He’s not going to give her satisfaction of claiming all responsibility. “We did...terrible things.”

Her gaze drifts back to the Colossus schematics.

“It was beautiful.”

“I put everything I had into it.” But it wasn’t enough.

 

+

 

Logically the stars aren’t any closer in the mountains than they are in the lowlands. Yet tonight, their music calls to him, drags painful notes across his heartstrings. Yue’s half-moon smiles down, mysterious in her own lonely sorrow.

He startles at the scrape of a boot. “I’m sorry!” Kuvira says hurriedly. “I didn’t know...I’ll leave.”

“No,” he says, despite his better judgement. “Stay.”

She sits down a respectable distance away. Too far, too close. He should’ve made her leave.

“The stars are beautiful tonight.”

“Yes.”

Zaofu had been starless. On their campaign they’d stretched on, endlessly into the dark.

 

+

 

“You could stay in Ganden, or,” Korra’s eyes tick over to Kuvira who’s studiously writing her report, “you could take over the project in New Garsai. It’s important, so I should be able to convince the president to shave a year or two off your sentence.”

It’s tempting. Baatar looks over the schematics of the dam once again. He recognises Varrick’s touch on some of the more...eccentric designs of the hydroelectric turbines. It’s probably why they want him for this.

“What about Sato?”

Korra shrugs. “Asami turned it down. She has other projects, and she’s not a civil engineer.”

 

+

 

New Garsai is different. There’s a lot more people for one, and nobody seems to recognize him. Not even his name, not among the many Bayars, Hwongs, Foongs and Bhavans. It suits him.

Varrick, disappointingly, remembers him all too well. “There you are!” he says on Baatar’s first day. “How was prison? I remember my own stint, not too bad really, but I’ve got Zhu Li to thank for that—”

New Garsai is brighter, warmer. It rains less. To be out and about surveying the valley, meeting contractors: he hasn’t felt so alive in a while.

Yet something is missing.

 

+

 

> Kuvira works. It helps her to…not think. Baatar’s replacement once used to serve the Empire directly under her. Discharged late into the campaign after an injury. Now Tanah serves the local government.
> 
> They don’t talk. Kuvira takes her orders. Bends her way deeper into the mountain, hoping it might eat her up like in an old-wives tale.
> 
> It’s shamefully easy to forget sometimes. Close quarters, exhaustion, adrenaline—she slips up, falls back into old patterns. A question comes out as an order, runs up against the other woman’s stony glare.
> 
> “Quiet, prisoner.”
> 
> Kuvira turns away, bites her tongue. Silent.

 

+

> Growing up, Kuvira had never been much of a talker. Noisy babies were a burden, loud children a nuisance.
> 
> Breaking the silence sparks a chain reaction. She’s asked to talk, to negotiate, to finalize deals, deliver speeches, give commands. She talks, talks her way into power, into her own self-destruction.
> 
> Now in Ganden, silence falls upon her again. There is no political small talk, no army gossip. No more commands to give. No more confessions to make on the stand.
> 
> No more quiet words at night, spoken softly in confidence, of love, fear, worry and trust.
> 
> It’s better that way.

 

+

 

“You look sad, boy,” says Leela Auntie as she pours Baatar his chai. He’s quiet. He likes his landlady, but she’s gossipy.

She winks at him. “Thinking about a girl?”

The unexpected accuracy of her guess makes him choke.

“What did you do, boy?” She chuckles. “You know it’s always better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

“Me?” He almost drops his cup. “She tried to kill me!”

“Oh.” Her eyes go wide. “Well, that’s...new. But, hey, I have a niece your age, real pretty—”

He excuses himself, citing work, and leaves before he becomes the talk of town.

 

+

 

On the day of the dam’s officiation ceremony, Baatar hikes up New Garsai’s highest peak. Anything to avoid the crowd, the reporters, the politicians. Besides, President Zhu Li will be there. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to look her in the face again. Not after what happened during the spirit weapon testing.

_Tried to kill her. Told myself I could’ve lived with it. What was one life for Kuvira, for the Empire?_

It rains. He sits on the mountaintop, cold and miserable.

 _You deserve this_.

He could work a hundred lifetimes and not make up for he’s done.

 

+

 

Ganden has changed. No longer a shantytown clustered around a rare-earth mine, the place now resembles something of a fortified town. They ask for his name at the gate, and he has to wait half an hour for his identity to be verified.

“There have been raids,” says Arus, the guard escorting him to the town hall.

“Bandits?”

He gives Baatar a sideways glance. “Empire loyalists.”

 _Oh_. Dread curls in his stomach. _Kuvira…_

“She drove ‘em off.”

“What?”

“The Great...Kuvira. Raised the walls. Told ‘em to go home and serve the people.”

“Oh.”

“Guess she really _has_ changed, huh.”

 

+

 

They meet again over a broken smelter Baatar’s been asked to fix. Kuvira’s eyes widen when she sees him, while he gapes at the haircut. Now curling shoulder length around her face, her dark locks soften the line of her jaw.

“They didn’t tell me—”

“Nice haircut.”

She laughs a little nervously. “Thanks.”

Before the silence gets too awkward. “Are you my help?”

“Looks like.”

“Okay.” And then it’s almost like old times, falling back into sync. They’ve always worked well together, meshing bending and engineering quickly and efficiently.

Their hands brush occasionally over their work. They don’t mention it.

 

+

 

“A care package from Zaofu?”

“Yeah.” He’s as curious as she is. This one’s even intact, made it past the guards.

“Open it,” Kuvira presses.

It’s just letters at first. Six, to be exact. One from everyone?

Then, a tiny platinum Colossus figurine. Kuvira flinches next to him. Baatar groans. Huan. Definitely Huan, the bastard.

The next present’s a little better. He holds out the small box of chocolates. “Take one.”

Briefly hiding from the guards, secretly eating sweets with his formerly estranged ex-fiancée. Baatar unfolds his mother’s letter. This was not how he’d ever imagined spending his thirtieth birthday.

 

+

> Technically they’re not allowed to be together.
> 
> Technically they shouldn’t _want_ to be together.
> 
> _I tried to kill him_ , she tells herself. _Stay away. Stay away._
> 
> They’re frequently assigned to the same projects. It does make some sense: they managed to modernize and reunite most of the Earth Kingdom in three years. Efficiency. Effectiveness. Results. Kuvira values these too.
> 
> With Baatar, she gets familiarity. Relief is easy with someone she trusts. And she knows now how much she can trust him.
> 
> _This city isn't worth sacrificing our life together._
> 
> Does he still trust her?
> 
> Nowadays, she can’t tell.
> 
> (He shouldn’t.)

 

+

 

“I can’t believe you.”

“Mom.”

“She tried to kill you!”

“Mom!”

“What did I do? Where did I go wrong, Baatar? _Please_ , tell me.”

“I...I don’t know.”

“I’m bringing you back to Zaofu. What’ve they been thinking anyway, letting you two work together.”

“No! I’m not going...home. Not yet.”

“So you’d rather stay here and work like a common labourer with the woman who tried to kill you?”

“When you put it that way. But, yes. It’s what I need to do. After everything.”

“I’m proud of you.”

“For taking responsibility? Well, I didn’t learn it from you.”

 

+

> Winter melts into spring. Kuvira wakes every morning to birdsong. The skies are clear, stretching forth endlessly blue.
> 
> Yet she feels hollowed out inside. There’s an emptiness inside her that goes as deep as the mines she’s been working in for the past five years.
> 
> When she’s not working, she sleeps. When she’s not sleeping, her mind fades.
> 
> A healer is eventually called, but finds nothing wrong.
> 
> One day she’s roused from an almost stupor-like slumber for a visitor. Korra’s here.
> 
> The Avatar, strong, beautiful, confident, respected, reminds Kuvira of everything she’d thrown away.
> 
> She accepts her reassignment with indifference.

 

+

 

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“Ah, my friend,” says Arus, slapping Baatar on the shoulder. “Love is crazy. _You’re_ definitely crazy. Consider it inevitable.”

That response isn’t reassuring. Baatar tells him so.

“Look man,” says the guard. “The fact that you’re asking me this already tells me you’re hopeless. Either the sex is to die for,” _wink wink_ , “or it’s love.”

“Love isn’t everything.”

“It’s not,” Arus agrees with the wisdom of a man twice divorced. “But just make up your mind, okay? I’ve got a hundred yuan riding on this, I need you two together before summer ends.”

 

+

> “Is that a letter or a book you’re writing?”
> 
> Kuvira’s hunches instinctively over her words. “It’s—”
> 
> “Hey, it’s okay,” says Korra reassuringly. “I’m not going to read it. Just asking.”
> 
> “It’s a letter.” Kuvira relaxes. “Letters. There are a lot of people I need to...apologise to.”
> 
> “You don’t—” Korra begins, then exhales sharply. “You don’t have to apologise to me.”
> 
> “I tried to kill you,” Kuvira says flatly. “Several times.”
> 
> “Yeahhhh…” Korra makes a face as she drags out the word. “You were kind of shit at it.”
> 
> “That’s no excuse.”
> 
> “Yeah, well, I’m the Avatar. Deal with it.”

 

+

> “You want me to join the Council of Five?”  
>    
>  “In a solely advisory capacity,” Korra says firmly. “You may never hold another military position again, and are forbidden from taking political office.”
> 
> “Why risk it in the first place?”
> 
> “Because you still care deeply. You could have let your sentence wear you down, make you bitter. And I know it's been hard. It was meant to be.”
> 
> “It was what I deserved.”
> 
> “I think you deserve this too.”
> 
> Kuvira bows her head in gratitude. “I cannot thank you enough.”
> 
> Korra surprises her with hug. “Second chances. You deserve one too.”

 

+

 

“Well,” says Arus to his colleague. “Look who’s here.”

They watch the Avatar and her companion alight from the airship. Ganden’s governor and her entourage near. Though the guards can’t make out what they’re saying, they spy two familiar figures edging closer to one another.

“Be ready to lose those hundred yuan.”

“You ain’t winning anything until they kiss.”

“Kiss, you fools!” Arus hisses under his breath. So far they’re only holding hands.

Then it happens. It’s no huge, romantic gesture—would be weird anyway, in front of all these people—but it’s still lips touching.

Crazy kids.

“I win.”


End file.
